Yes! This is a great topic Dems should be talking about more because (a) Americans would love some financial relief in parenting costs; and (b) Republicans talking about increasing the birthrate often sound weird and misogynistic. Americans don't generally like government dictating cultural changes, but using smart policy levers.
I very much believe that the costs associated with starting out as a young family now are negatively effecting birth rates. In particular the cost of housing. There are many couples (like us) that refused to have kids in an apartment. If you bring down the cost of housing you get new couples into homes faster and you will probably get more kids.
The average home cost 2.2x the average income in 1950, now it's 6x. That's a huge problem, and the solution is to build a LOT more homes.
All that being said, conservatives are also right. Fertility rates are negative in basically every developed country. INCLUDING those European countries with all the government support like long maternity leaves etc.
This means that culture is obviously a big factor as well. So we need to fix the housing cost problem AND the culture. That means media (TV, movies etc) should take a real pro family view. Other prominent leaders should as well.
Final thought, at the end of the day a culture is a success or not if it can perpetuate itself. Western societies and liberal values are at a cross roads. If they can't maintain population levels, they be definition fail. And they will be replaced by something else. That something else will probably have zero respect for liberalism or women's rights.
How does government coerce media to take a pro-family view?
You may be right there needs to be a cultural shift, but I don't see many policy levers for that, and people are generally quite resistent when government gets too involved in imposing cultural values on them (see the backlash to "wokeness")
I don't think government should coerce media to take a pro-family view. That would be against the 1st amendment.
That doesn't mean there aren't levers government can pull. For example, media spend.
But I agree that the government isn't going to be the prime driver here. Instead we need a sea change of attitude amongst the Hollywood elite.
For example, Hollywood has pushed a pretty effective discrimination/racism/sexism is bad message over the years, that I think has meaningfully moved the culture in a good way.
Yes! This is a great topic Dems should be talking about more because (a) Americans would love some financial relief in parenting costs; and (b) Republicans talking about increasing the birthrate often sound weird and misogynistic. Americans don't generally like government dictating cultural changes, but using smart policy levers.
I don't think you will get the changes needed without both. Making families more affordable and changing the culture (see my other longer comment)
I very much believe that the costs associated with starting out as a young family now are negatively effecting birth rates. In particular the cost of housing. There are many couples (like us) that refused to have kids in an apartment. If you bring down the cost of housing you get new couples into homes faster and you will probably get more kids.
The average home cost 2.2x the average income in 1950, now it's 6x. That's a huge problem, and the solution is to build a LOT more homes.
All that being said, conservatives are also right. Fertility rates are negative in basically every developed country. INCLUDING those European countries with all the government support like long maternity leaves etc.
This means that culture is obviously a big factor as well. So we need to fix the housing cost problem AND the culture. That means media (TV, movies etc) should take a real pro family view. Other prominent leaders should as well.
Final thought, at the end of the day a culture is a success or not if it can perpetuate itself. Western societies and liberal values are at a cross roads. If they can't maintain population levels, they be definition fail. And they will be replaced by something else. That something else will probably have zero respect for liberalism or women's rights.
How does government coerce media to take a pro-family view?
You may be right there needs to be a cultural shift, but I don't see many policy levers for that, and people are generally quite resistent when government gets too involved in imposing cultural values on them (see the backlash to "wokeness")
I don't think government should coerce media to take a pro-family view. That would be against the 1st amendment.
That doesn't mean there aren't levers government can pull. For example, media spend.
But I agree that the government isn't going to be the prime driver here. Instead we need a sea change of attitude amongst the Hollywood elite.
For example, Hollywood has pushed a pretty effective discrimination/racism/sexism is bad message over the years, that I think has meaningfully moved the culture in a good way.
Something similar can happen here.
I'm very down with cutting costs. However, it's just not true that the data supports the argument that costs are why fertility is down. https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/having-kids-is-expensive-thats-not